


i almost do

by BooyahFordhamYacht



Series: don't know if you mean everything to me(chost oneshots) [4]
Category: Saturday Night Live, Saturday Night Live RPF
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Based on a Taylor Swift Song, Breakup, Chost, M/M, Post-Break Up, like a lot, part 2?, they miss each other, unclear ending, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 15:16:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21376222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BooyahFordhamYacht/pseuds/BooyahFordhamYacht
Summary: it's over. done.so why can't they let go?
Relationships: Michael Che/Colin Jost
Series: don't know if you mean everything to me(chost oneshots) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1236029
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	i almost do

_ I bet this time of night you’re still up _

_ I bet you’re tired from a long hard week _

_ I bet you’re sitting in your chair by the window, _

_ Looking out at the city _

_ And I bet sometimes you wonder about me _

_ I just wanna tell you _

_ It takes everything in me not to call you _

_ I wish I could run to you _

_ And I hope you know that every time I don’t _

_ I almost do _

_ I almost do _

Michael never wanted to leave. He’d been happy there, really genuinely happy in New York. SNL had been everything he’d ever wanted. It all had. He’d gotten the guy, gotten the dream job, gotten a great apartment and even a fucking corgi. They’d had it all. 

Until they hadn’t. Colin and Michael’s breakup happened in complete opposite fashion to their getting together. The two of them falling in love had been quiet, slow, late nights and soft touches. The two of them falling apart had been loud, sudden, the sound of breaking mugs and breaking hearts. And he knew the very moment he walked out of Colin’s apartment that they’d never be able to work together the same way again. So he took some personal time, let Cecily take back her old role on Update, and tried to figure out what to do next. Where to go next.

Kate had begged him to stay, having listened to Colin enough times that she really believed they could work it out. Michael knew better. So he ran. He got offered a job writing for some dumb skit show in London of all places, and it was no SNL, but it was as far from pain as he could get, so he packed up his things and jumped on a plane. 

No, that makes it sound too simple, too clean. It was no simple disappearance. Michael didn’t just leave. Even on the drive to the airport, he turned around three times before he made it. He bolted from his gate twice before he made it on the plane. Every part of him wanted to run back to the bed he’d called home, to the man he still loved, because it would be so  _ easy. _ Well, every part of him except the part that remembered the earth-shattering heartbreak that loving and losing Colin had brought him. Michael couldn’t do it again. He wouldn’t survive. 

So he got on a plane, got a cold apartment in London, and finds himself here too often, staring at the sleeping form of another one night stand, looking at New York time on his phone. It’s 3am in New York, a Sunday, and that means Colin is probably just home by now, showered, in his pajamas. If Michael has to guess, Colin’s sitting in the bay window in what was once their apartment, watching the people move like ants below. 

If Michael has to guess, Colin’s thinking about the show, everything that went wrong and right, already coming up with funnier jokes for the coming weeks, absentmindedly petting Sophie’s little corgi ears as she sleeps. 

If Michael allows himself to dream, Colin’s thinking about him.

He can almost picture it, Colin thinking about him. He knows the way Colin used to bite his lip when he’d look at Michael, can almost imagine that he still does that when he thinks about what they had. 

But they broke up for a reason. Michael left for a reason. They didn’t work, and missing Colin can’t change that. He knows this, and yet every time he wakes up next to someone that doesn’t have Colin’s gravelly morning voice and atrocious bedhead and clingy disposition, he wonders.

On this particular morning, he’s made the mistake of watching Weekend Update the night before. His solution, of course, had been to go out in search of alcohol and a warm body for his bed. His headache and the snores beside him tell Michael he was successful in both. The ache he feels is so much worse today, and he lets himself blame that for opening his phone and letting his thumb take him to Colin’s contact, to their old text messages that Michael couldn’t - wouldn’t - delete. 

He could call Colin. Colin’d answer, he knows, and that’s probably why he doesn’t. If he just met with Colin’s voicemail, he’d chicken out and hang up without leaving a message, and Colin, Michael’s sure, would be too hesitant to call him back.

Michael’s called him before, just when he knows Colin is at work or even when he’s staring at Colin on his TV screen. He calls when he knows Colin won’t answer, because he can listen to his voicemail and remember what it sounded like to speak to him in person. But he never calls when Colin might answer, because he’d never know what to say. 

So Michael just stares at the phone number that stays emblazoned into the back of his brain, at that ridiculous contact photo Colin had insisted on taking. It was a trend, he’d claimed, to press your face against a window or something to take the photo, so it looked like you were trapped in their phone. Michael had groaned and grumbled at him, but cherished the photo all the same. 

Michael looks at it now, and that feeling of warmth, that little flame that Colin had set alight inside of him, is doused by the painful reality of Colin’s goneness and Michael’s aloneness.

_ I bet you think I either moved on or hate you _

_ Cause each time you reach out there’s no reply _

_ I bet it never ever occurred to you _

_ That I can’t say hello to you _

_ And risk another goodbye _

_ I just wanna tell you _

_ It takes everything in me not to call you _

_ I wish I could run to you _

_ And I hope you know that every time I don’t _

_ I almost do _

_ I almost do _

Sophie whines and paces in front of the door again, and Colin knows she’s waiting for Michael to come home. He is too. But Michael isn’t coming home, and Colin feels like bashing his head against the wall. What had he been thinking that night? Their fight had been over something so stupid, and yet Colin had lost him anyways.

There’d been another missed call from Michael this morning when Colin had woken up post-show. Never a voicemail, and Colin had never had the guts to call him back. 

Colin just isn’t strong enough. If he called Michael, if he reached out, and Michael had moved on or didn’t love Colin anymore… Colin had lost Michael once, and he knows he wouldn’t survive doing it again, in any capacity. It wasn’t something he was proud of, but at least he knew it.

But Colin can’t help imagining what Michael must think, calling him all the time to no reply. Me must believe that Colin hates him, or that he’s got someone else now, or something else like that. Michael must think Colin’s forgotten all about him. 

Every single time he wakes up to a missed call from Michael, he feels like his heart is breaking all over again. Colin wants to call him, so so badly. Wants to hear Michael’s voice again, wants to remember what it feels like when he makes Michael laugh. 

Every time Colin gets home from a show and sits in the bay window and looks out over New York City, he feels that ache he’s felt since Michael left. That cold emptiness that reminds him, as he looks out over thousands of buildings full of lights, that Michael isn’t in any of them, isn’t anywhere near him. 

It hurts. Colin isn’t too much of a tough guy to admit that he spends too much time wondering about Michael: where he is, what he’s doing, if he’s happy, if he misses Colin.

Colin can’t let himself wonder if Michael’s met someone else. If he goes down that rabbit hole, he can’t help but be sure he’ll never come back out. 

Every time he wakes up to a missed call, he tells himself that someday, he’ll call back. Someday, he’ll call and Michael will answer and everything will be fine again. That day will come, someday, hopefully. Colin doesn’t want to see the day where the calls stop coming. 

It takes everything in him not to get on a plane, to go Michael. Yet it would also take everything in him to do those things, and so Colin is stuck, in between reality and possibility, in between can and should and can’t and won’t, waiting forever, stuck in somewhere that is simply almost.

_ Oh, we made quite a mess, babe _

_ It’s probably better off this way _

If you love something, let it go. If it comes back, it’s meant to be. That’s what they say, isn’t it? Michael sometimes makes himself believe that he and Colin were destined to break up, that there’s nothing he can do, that they wouldn’t work even if he went back and begged for it. 

It has to be better off this way, because that’s the only thing keeping Michael on this side of the Atlantic. 

If he lets himself believe that there’s a chance, that he and Colin could work, would work, if he only had the guts to go back, Michael knows he’d be on the next plane home and he’d break his own heart all over again. 

But there are times, if he’s drunk enough, if there was no one at the bar quite enough like Colin to take home, that he imagines the way they used to be.

God, Michael loves him. Michael loves Colin more than he’ll ever love anyone else, he knows that. Maybe that’s why he can’t let go. Because he knows he’ll never be that happy again. 

Fucking pathetic, isn’t it? That Michael hasn’t got the guts to try again with the love of his life. If only. 

_ And I confess babe, _

_ In my dreams you’re touching my face _

_ And asking me if I wanna try again _

_ With you _

More and more these days, Colin has that dream. That dream where there’s a knock on the door, and he opens it. And then it’s Michael, smiling and touching him and kissing him and telling him he loves him, he’s sorry, he wants to come home, he wants to try again.

And then it’s Colin waking alone in a cold bed, to an empty apartment, crying again over a dream he’ll never get to see become reality.

But that’s life, isn’t it? So Colin rolls over and dries his eyes on the edge of his pillowcase, tries not to think about the empty side of the bed. He brushes his teeth, takes a shower, does everything he’s supposed to do, everything Kate had to force him to do for a solid month after Michael left. He never did thank her for that, or apologize. Sophie’s torn another stuffed animal to shreds, white fluff covering the apartment, and Colin is reminded that he really does need to tell Alex and Mikey not to buy her stuffies, only toys she can’t shred. 

He clips Sophie’s leash on as she dances around his feet, and they head to the door for her morning walk.

Colin is startled by the figure raising a fist to knock when he swings the door open.

“Hi,” Michael says.

**Author's Note:**

> hehe so what do you think happens?


End file.
